Astronaut and moonwalker Alan Bean dies at 86

Bean also commanded the second crewed flight to the first U.S. space station Skylab in July 1973.

A decade later, Bean told me that his brain must have been wired differently from the norm for astronauts.

"When Alan's third career as the artist of Apollo moved forward, he would call me to ask about some detail about lunar soil, color or equipment he wanted to have represented exactly in a painting".

He soon retired from NASA and devoted himself to painting, a longtime hobby that had become an overriding passion.

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Born in Texas in 1932, Bean graduated the University of Texas with a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955 and went on to the Navy Test Pilot School. He added, "I think of myself not as an astronaut who paints, but as an artist who was once an astronaut". "I thought maybe I could learn to be, so that appealed to me".

In his 1998 book, Apollo, Bean discussed his inspirations and goals as a painter by writing, "You know, people romanticize the moon".

He then commanded the second crewed flight to the United States' first space station, Skylab, in 1973. Armstrong once said, "Alan Bean and his "astroartistry" recreate the drama and excitement of man's exploration of the moon as only could be chronicled by one who has been there".

With his passing, only four of the twelve men who have walked on the moon are still alive - Buzz Aldrin, Dave Scott, Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmitt.

"Alan Bean was the most extraordinary person I ever met", said astronaut Mike Massimino, who flew on two space shuttle missions to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

Apollo 12, the second manned lunar landing mission, was launched on 14th November 1969, with astronauts Conrad, Bean and Richard Gordon on board. His paintings, inspired by space travel, featured lunar boot prints as well as small pieces of his mission patches which were stained by Moon dust. "My boss asked if I could make a living off art, and I said I didn't know, but I had to find out".

Over the course of that third career, Bean created more than 100 paintings that he said marked "the beginning of a new category in the progression of art history: art of human experiences off our home planet".

Alan Bean's "Reaching for the Stars" graces the wall of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.

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